The fallout in the aftermath of last week's infamous tweet by Jack Welch in which he dares to accuse the BLS of manipulating labor data (the same BLS which has already been purposefully caught leaking data, but never actually caught red handed manipulating it: after all things like these don't happen, Liborgate notwithstanding), something which it did (although the one thing that nobody dares to say is "why" because if suddenly it becomes clear that if this most critical of economic indicators is fudged, then every other one must be) has begun. Moments ago, in response to perceived political badgering by Fortune and Reuters, Jack Welch, the CEO of Chairman of GE from 1981 to 2001, just after the company's stock peaked at $593 billion, the outspoken critic of Obama has decided to sever ties with both the CNN-controlled publication and with the Thomson Reuters organization, and instead going forward will use the WSJ as a platform. What drove Welch over the edge is the now traditional media response of attacking the person instead of the argument whenever the status quo is threatened, in this case predicated by articles by both Fortune and Reuters.

CNNMoney, which shares content with Fortune.com, ran a story on Friday covering Welch's tweet. The piece said that even conservative economists thought Welch was wrong to question the jobs numbers. On Tuesday, Fortune.com ran a story detailing Welch's record as a job destroyer. GE lost nearly 100,000 jobs during the 20 years in which Welch ran the company. "I never put myself out there as an employment agency," Welch told Fortune.

Following the story, Welch sent an e-mail to Reuters' Steve Adler and Serwer saying that he and his wife Suzy, who have jointly written for Reuters and Fortune in the past, were "terminating our contract" and will no longer be sending our "material to Fortune." Reuters' story about Welch's tweet quoted money manager and blogger Barry Ritholtz, who said Welch's comments were laughable. Reuters wrote that Ritholtz comments were referring to allegations that Welch regularly manipulated GE's earnings during his tenure as CEO in order to best Wall Street profit estimates.

"This guy is the guy that's telling me the books are cooked? That's hilarious," said Barry Ritholtz, CEO and director of equity research at Fusion IQ in New York, which manages about $300 million in assets. Ritholtz, one of the first to respond to Welch's tweet, was referring to the allegation that during his tenure at GE, Welch sometimes used the GE Capital finance unit to sell quickly assets such as real estate and ensure that the largest U.S. conglomerate regularly beat Wall Street profit estimates.

In addition to blogging, Barry Ritholtz manages $256.7 million for 700 clients according to the latest Form ADV for his firm Fusion Analytics, which employs 18 people, and charges a 0.60% annual management fee for assets managed over $5MM (link, full investor borchure here). He and his employees are frequent guests on CNBC.

Either way, we have already noted the major issues with the BLS report (here and here). For those who believe that the unemployment rate, which is at a 3+ year low, is indicative of the general status of the US economy, which is now growing at a sub-stall speed ~1.5% GDP, please advise: we have some AJ RMBS we need to offload and are always looking for gullible idiots buyers.

On a separate note, if we can't believe the employment statistics, why do we accept with no body or publicly released photographic evidence that Obama et al actually killed OBL? I personally think the corpse, if there is one, needed to be checked for freezer burn.

The dude pulls this "belief" completely out his ass, and then gets embarrassed when people ask him to justify it??? Of course you should be able to throw out any kind of whacky conspiracy bullshit without ever having to cite evidence or proof! The onus should always be on the people you fling the bullshit at, not the flinger of said bullshit. If the accused can't "disprove" the bullshit enough to satisfy the bullshitter's personal "feeling" about his personal theory, it must be true! That's what science is! Fox News has proven this formula works with at least 47% of America! (And an even higher number around here.)

Towards the end of the Reign of Terror, Talleyrand (who had be a supporter of Robespierre) switched sides, publicly condemning the killings. He had smelt the air. He then joined sides with Napolean. We know what happened to Robespierre and Napolean. But what happened to Talleyrand is far more informative: He died an old, wealthy man, a "statesman" who outlived several bloody revolutions and wars.

I was explaining to colleagues earlier today that today's Europe is like England and Scotland of Yesteryear. Why did the Scottish nobels hang William Wallace out to be hanged and drawn and quartered? Because they, like current Eurozone country functionaries, were cut into the deal ... the average citizen of the Eurozone willl be allowed to twist in the wind because their representatives know that they will be well taken care of while the Eurozone apparatus continues to exist.

They unfortunately do not perceive they can be dragged into the hell to which they have condemned the rest of their underlings.

Hard to know who to root for in this deal. Welch is a lying, tough talkin' pussy poser who A) gets mad, stamps his little foot and runs home like a little bitch when someone dares to criticize something he said B) after he spent a career telling the tens of thousands of people he fired to 'suck it up like a man & stop whining!' and C) ran a company that miraculously brought in numbers just a teensy bit higher than the previous quarter for 80 straight quarters or so........which makes his complaints about 'cooked numbers' just a TAD ironic.

OTOH, Ritholtz is at least as big an asshole as Welch, just on a smaller scale. OT _Other_ OH, CNN/Reuters sucks donkey dicks. It's like the Dark Unholy Trinity: the trifecta of assholishness.

Jack went up multiple notches in my book due to this affair. The only weak point was in the middle when he seemed to waffle a little. Call them fucking liars, tell them your bullshit meter is pegging, and point out that this shit has been going on since LBJ or earlier. Tell them that the Birth-Death model is a total lie--a third trimester abortion. Tell them that anybody who doubts men conspire is an idiot and an asshole. In short, tell them the "conpiracy theorist" antagonists to fuck themselves. This shit pisses me off. Of course the assertion that they cooked the books is credible. Right? Wrong? Who know? But credible? You betcha!

I was a long time SR Exec at GE during Jack's reign of terror. He's a prick, no doubt about it. But I agree with him on the BLS. Jack's a ratfuck and he knows a ratfuck when he sees one.

And GE did cook the books. Every quarter if we were off a little, just book an asset sale to make the difference. Strongarm some poor bastard that owed us money to buy something, even at inflated prices just to make the number. The whole place was pyschotic at closing time for the quarters.